Forest Lake residents question plans for rebuilding

Friday

Mar 9, 2012 at 12:01 AM

TUSCALOOSA | City officials, including Mayor Walt Maddox, answered questions about zoning and other facets of the Tuscaloosa Forward plans at Thursday night's annual meeting of the Forest Lake Homeowners Association.

By Mark Hughes CobbStaff Writer

TUSCALOOSA | City officials, including Mayor Walt Maddox, answered questions about zoning and other facets of the Tuscaloosa Forward plans at Thursday night's annual meeting of the Forest Lake Homeowners Association.Developer Stan Pate took a chunk of the alloted time to address concerns about his proposed rental complex.“It's long overdue to be something other than the ugly trailer park it once was,” Pate said, referring to the old Arlington Mobile Home Park at Hargrove Road and Second Avenue East.Pate said he couldn't give all the specifics yet, but he plans to be at the March 19 meeting of the city planning and zoning commission. He promised transparency as the project grows.“I don't have any secrets,” he said, giving his cellphone number to the roughly 80 Forest Lake residents attending. “I wanna hear from you.”Questions revolved around issues of rebuilding, student renters, lake draining and traffic flow, after brief progress updates from Maddox; John McConnell, the city's director of Planning and Development Services; Robin Edgeworth, co-commander of the city's Incident Command Team; and Joe Robinson, head of the city's Office of the City Engineer.In the most audibly popular announcement of the night, Maddox told them “Curbside recycling, I know that's something you've been wanting, will begin May 7.” Some of the evening partly recapped Tuesday's City Hall open house for the residential zoning plan and Tuscaloosa Forward Generational Master Plan. The Forest Lake Homeowners Association meeting is held in March each year by the group's bylaws, but there was a special meeting called in August, because of the extraordinary damage caused by the April 27 tornado, said Christine Dietsch, president of the association. Questions then were more immediate. Now they're thinking long-term.“Some of these questions had been discussed Tuesday, but we have some older people for whom a trek to City Hall is still a bit much,” she said.Maddox noted the process will not be perfect, because no one is, but that the chance to rebuild Tuscaloosa is “the honor of a lifetime” for the city officials.“And we want to continue to work with you as the process goes forward,” he said.The mayor also put in a pitch for attendees to sign Councilman Kip Tyner's petition protesting proposed changes in the Alabama Department of Mental Health, especially the plan to build a new facility to replace Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility, which houses court-committed criminal or forensic patients, in Alberta. Along with Forest Lake, Alberta was one of the areas hardest hit by the tornado, losing about 70 percent of its structures, he said. “This is a bad decision,” Maddox said of the proposed mental health department changes. “Tuscaloosa will not be the better for it.”Edgeworth addressed funding for cleanup of the lake, which should begin in mid-April. A grant proposal from the Federal Emergency Management Agency was rejected because the area included a body of water, so the city found funding instead from the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service. Despite the city's involvement in debris-removal, she said, “It will still remain a private lake, as it is now.”Robinson said McGiffert & Associates civil engineers would drain as little of the lake as possible to see how much debris needs to be removed. Robinson also spoke to concerns about traffic on 15th Street and through the neighborhood. The Alabama Department of Transportation and the mayor and City Council will meet today with six property owners to discuss access management and medians.Many residents asked about past problems with student renters, specifically noise and parking complaints. McConnell said that city ordinances against those problems, and against more than three unrelated people living in the same dwelling, would continue to be enforced. But in answer to a question, he said there is no way to zone students separately from “settled professionals.”“Unfortunately, we can't do this any more than I can zone my in-laws away from me,” he said.Delays in houses yet to be demolished, the pedestrian bridge and other issues often came to questions of funding, according to Edgeworth.“The answer is money,” she said. She expressed a wish that the federal government would just lay everything out on the table at once, so the city could say, “We want it all.”Forest Lake Homeowners Assocation officer George Harris seemed pleased with the results of the brief meeting.“I think we made a good beginning to get these questions answered,” he said.Forest Lake resident Rob Kemp concurred, saying that many of the questions arising were already well into the process of being addressed.“Folks are fearful,” he said. “There's a lot of emotion out there among the homeowners. They look out their windows and see the devastation that's still there.”But when people sit down and open themselves up to listening, he said, they often like what they hear.“I think things are moving forward.”